16 Hour AstroTrac CCD Image

By Eddie Guscott Stirland - 13 October 2008

Find out how Practical Astronomer editor Eddie Guscott obtained his amazing mosaic of the Perseus and Cepheus region of the Milky Way.

Its great to see some CCD images taken with an AstroTrac Eddie. We are so used to seeing Milky Way images taken with DSLR cameras and its amazing to see the hydrogen alpha regions picked out by the hydrogen alpha filter and the sensitive CCD.

Sand, Stars and a TT320X - Tunisia Report

By Martin Stirland - 28 August 2008

Martin Stirland in the Sahara

Holidays are for getting to pristine skies, seeing the Milky Way how it should be seen, finding Scorpio half way up the night sky, and finding it takes you longer to polar align because the polar scope is just full of stars around Polaris...

...not to waste what was now a pristine night sky, I had the window down and my head sticking out, looking up like a demented dog - cheeks and ears flapping in the breeze as the car speed along.

Find out how Martin beat a Saharan sand storm and still managed to come away with some cracking images

Wow Martin! - dedication if ever I saw it! You've got me thinking about my next trip to ultra dark skies now...

Trails and Tribulations

“My Adventures with an AstroTrac at the Dalby Star Party”

By Kevin Baxter - 15 August 2008

Images © Kevin Baxter

First to set the scene, Adderstone field in the middle of Dalby forest in North Yorkshire. Its gone 21:00 and the first of the summer triangle stars are popping into view when the shout goes up, Jupiter! Just to the east of the meridian and above the trees there she shines with her attendant moons. Scopes and binoculars are quickly slewed round and the cry of “isn’t it bright” and “I can see the moons” waft around the field.

Meanwhile someone with the eyesight of a toilet block rodent spots the pole star and the game is afoot...

Read Kevin's highly entertaining account and see how he overcame adversity to obtain a great image

Great write up Kevin - I've only just stopped laughing!

I've never left my camera off, failed to remove the lens cap, or failed to achieve perfect focus before an exposure - honest!

Nik Szymanek's Magnificent La Palma Skies

By Nik Szymanek - 15 July 2008

I've just got back from my visit to the La Palma Observatory and I'm very happy to report that the AstroTrac performed superbly! It was a little superstar!

This mosaic is made up of 8 separate panes taken with a Canon 20D and 3-minute exposures with a Canon EF 28 mm lens at f/3.5.

Images © Nik Szymanek

I hardly had to do anything except colour balance the images a bit. I put all the raw frames into Deep Sky Stacker and combined them into a stronger image that smooths out the noise. For the panoramas they are mostly just 2 or 3 minute single exposures. The sky conditions at La Palma were the best I've seen since I've been using the AstroTrac and it shows in the images.

I ran the AstroTrac from a set of re-chargeable batteries and that worked a treat. I purchased a high-speed AA battery charger from Maplin and that charged 4 AA batteries very quickly. In this way there was very little down-time during charging and it saved lugging loads of AA batteries around.

Two of the three people I travelled with have expressed a strong interest in purchasing AstroTracs for themselves! It's a great product!

Read Nik's full report and drool over his gorgeous images!

Stunning Nik! - your latest images are some of the best I’ve seen of the Milky Way - I can't believe how sharp the dust lanes are!